(Doppler) The Voice is a Dream
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [Doppler #1] Kouji can't understand why his brother sometimes seems like a stranger. He also can't understand what lie his dreams drive him to find, and why it should even matter to him who only wants his family to live happily ever after...
1. 1-01

**A/N:**_ Blame Aiko's Eclipse series/Lightverse for this. Remi's muse decided it wanted to let this idea run wild too. _

_This is part of a long-winded series (see my series list under the subheading "Doppler" to see what order the fics are in; this'll be updated as things are further written/ideas grow and change). For now, it's simply post-frontier, but there'll be AU elements later on (looking at the current fuzzy plan for certain other sequels/side-stories/possible prequels anyhow :D). Or if you're following me and don't want to mess around with the plan, look out for any fic titles that start with [Doppler] – that means it's a part of this –verse._

_And that's enough intro from me. I'll let the stories speak for the rest and indulge my muse's desire for twin-torture. She claims it's been too long. I claim she's not reading right…but she doesn't like to listen to me very often. The story will slowly build up regardless, so enjoy this first instalment!_

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><p><strong>The Doppler Series<strong>

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**1.01**

Someone was whispering in his dreams. Insistently. Louder when he rolled and buried his head into his pillow in an effort to drown it out.

'Can't you see?'

No, he wasn't going to look. But there were hands on his face: sweet but bitter smelling, calloused but smooth, unfamiliar and yet he wasn't recoiling from them, as if he _did_ know them after all…

Those hands flickered past his eyelashes. Pressed on his eyelids. Tugged on them. He felt them opening unwillingly.

'Come now. Don't be afraid.'

But he was afraid, wasn't he? There was no other reason he'd keep them squeezed shut as he was. Why he was trying to stop his eyes opening, instead of fighting those cool hands on his face.

'I'm only showing you the truth.'

He heard another whisper. Somewhere. Sounding familiar – and yet, for a moment, he felt he didn't know it at all.

His eyes opened. He stared at the mirror. At his own face in the shadowed glass. At the scar over his right brow…

No… He wasn't the one with that scar.

'Kouji!' It was a shout, and yet it sounded like a whisper to him. So distant. So far away. Barely recognisable…and yet, why wouldn't he recognise it immediately for what it was? Whose it was?

'Because…' And there was that first voice again, unknown but for some reason both familiar and knowing. '…that voice tells a lie.'

He was slipping away, and unfamiliarity descended upon him, grasping him. Unfamiliar hands – they weren't on his face anymore, but his shoulders –

They made him squirm. He struck against them. He felt those hands let go, those final words still echoing in his ears.

'_That voice tells a lie…'_

What lie was that? And why did he even need to know, he wondered.


	2. 1-02

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**1.02**

He'd come out of his dream and pinned his brother to the floor in a single, fluid movement. The carpet dug into his pyjama pants. Kouichi's surprised expression stared up at him, hair tousled and half pinned under blankets as well – his blankets, Kouji noticed, wondering why he was surprised. Obviously, Kouichi had tried to wake him, and he'd reacted.

'Sorry,' he mumbled, climbing off. He realised he'd grabbed both the other's wrists, one in each hand. At another time he might have admired his reflexes: trained so diligently through martial arts classes and honed to near perfection in the digital world.

At that point he just wondered what sort of dream had driven him so blindly. 'I'm sorry,' he said again, as Kouichi sat up.

'It's fine.' And he didn't rub his wrists or lift his shoulders in each new breath or any of those things that would give him away. 'What were you dreaming about?'

Kouji blinked. 'Something…' The thoughts flittered away like the dying sunlight as sunset gave way to the black night. 'There was something that made me…' Some negative emotion, he was sure. Anger? Hatred? Fear? 'Uncomfortable?'

'You don't remember?' He tilted his head a little, representing the confusion Kouji thought he felt far better than his own expression, he was sure. He didn't need a mirror to tell him that. Or a light.

For some reason, both those fleeting thoughts made him think of that dream again.

'Kouji?'

Kouji flicked on the light switch. The lamp's glow swept across the room and Kouichi shielded his eyes. Kouji's adjusted quicker, and he'd needed the light. To fix the sheets and find his pillow so he could get back to sleep.

Or maybe all that was just an excuse and he, Kouji, could have done it just as well in the dark. He'd just never tried. If something woke him in the night, it would be on with the light and start over again. As though what came before never happened…

'Good night, Ni-san.'

'Good night, Kouji.' Kouichi lay back down again and Kouji turned off the lamp, beginning the night again. 'Sweet dreams.'


	3. 1-03

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**1.03**

It wasn't the first time he'd had that dream, but he tended to forget it. That night was an exception only because Kouichi rubbing his shoulder the next morning was a sore reminder. Kouji winced every time he did, though it seemed an unconscious motion on the part of his brother.

Not that Kouji could blame him. Though he'd been half asleep, he had knocked his brother down and pinned him to the floor. And the futon could only block so much of the force.

But things like that were reminders to disrupted nights. Though his father and stepmother didn't seem to note the motions. Nor their friends when they came over afterwards. Nor, he guessed, his birth mother when the weekend was over and Kouichi was back with her. Though the discomfort or pain – whichever it was, he couldn't quite scrummage the courage to ask and nor did Kouichi offer that information on his own – might have faded by the afternoon. Who could know when no-one saw or spoke or questioned.

But that was how things were. He had a similar pain sometimes, and though he felt his brother's eyes on him Kouichi never asked nor commented. He knew, they both knew, the cause of that. That first, unintentional strike from Duskmon that had left a lasting scar on his back. Ironically, that was the only physical scar either of them obtained from their numerous encounters.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it was of that scar, he dreamed of that night. Until the languidly drifting images shifted towards a different scar.


	4. 2-01

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**2.01**

Kouichi had a scar above his right eyebrow that sometimes throbbed.

It was a reminder of how he'd fallen down the stairs. A memento of that out-of-body experience that was the digital world.

Sometimes…it seemed like the only proof he had that it wasn't all a dream.

And Kouji. And the others. But except on every other weekend when they were together, there was a barrier of distance between them.

And on the phone, there was only a voice that could easily be a dream.

Sometimes, he wondered if it hadn't all been a dream. Because everything went on much the same. Though his mother knew that he knew, though his father knew, and his stepmother which he couldn't still think of as _his_ because he rarely saw her and barely knew here… Nothing else changed. There was school. There was home. There was the community he lived in: the people he saw that weren't quite friends, his classmates…

School, _life_, went on for the most part as normal. Especially outside of their homes.

But while the voices got left behind – to be heard over the phone after school or in person over every other weekend, the scar followed him everywhere, along with its occasional throb.


	5. 2-02

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**2.02**

Sometimes, he forgot about it. It was easy to forget when there were distractions, when no-one was looking at that mark on his brow, were talking about other things instead, showing him other things…

But he often found Kouji's gaze resting there, his eyes tracing the faint scar still there…

And, at times like that, it was impossible to forget.

And it made him uncomfortable. More so when he began to feel Kouji was looking at that scar more often that Kouichi could catch him doing so.

Why? Was he regretting? Blaming? Fearing?

He couldn't ask. Just like he couldn't just walk up to Kouji in that time – after he'd found out the truth, before the Digital World –

Maybe it was blaming. For his inaction. For his cowardice. For his silence.

The same silence he kept now.

He stared at himself in the mirror. At that barely visible line above his brow that sometimes seemed an ugly red and larger, much larger, than life.

And he looked at his own shadowed eyes and thought bitterly how little it seemed he'd changed.


	6. 2-03

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**2.03**

He dreamed. Most of them were about the digital world. Memories as Duskmon. Memories against Lucemon. Memories – the most of them – memories of him floating, struggling, in a darkness that seemed never-ending…

And he'd wake up to a different darkness, the darkness of the night, unable to work out why that darkness seemed so hollow, so incomplete, at first.

But that thought was changing slowly.

And as it changed, so did other things. Kouji's dreams, for one. How Kouichi would open his eyes in the night and see his twin trapped in the fervour of his own dream. How he would try to wake him. How he'd usually fail. How, sometimes, Kouji _would_ wake – and wake alarmed. Years of martial arts training would kick in and Kouichi would find himself pinned terrifyingly to the ground.

Worse was the instinct to fight back: to dodge or hit or break the hold after the first couple of times which had caught him by surprise – even though he was the awake one, who couldn't be forgiven for being half-asleep and still with a dream.

In the end, he thought it safer to leave his brother dreaming. They seemed more confusing than harming, and the danger was when they were both half asleep and half awake in the night.

It was a sad thought, that there was something uncomfortable about the night.


	7. 2-04

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**2.04**

Finally, he gave up trying to get a decent amount of sleep in the night. Beneath his own odd dreams and those of his brothers, he was getting little rest when they were together. At least, during the weekdays when they both had school and other things and four hours of travel-time between them, he could lie awake and stare at the dark ceiling or, better, the scenery outside, before falling asleep again.

The night had seemed so peaceful before the Digital World, but now it was filled with restlessness.

One night he sighed, then got out of bed and warmed himself a cup of milk. Slowly, it became a nightly ritual.

It took a few weeks before Kouji followed him down and join him.


	8. 3-01

**The Doppler Series**

* * *

><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**3.01**

Kouji tried to fight instinct. He really did. But it was difficult when sleep and the whispers from dreams clung to him.

And, for some reason, it took him longer and longer to recognise his brother.

It was easier when Kouichi gave up on trying to wake him, but it hurt as well. The voice in his dreams was amused. It laughed. Kouji had a harder time shutting it out even though the more reasonable part of him pointed out what was more likely to be the cause. The dreams weren't hurting him, just confusing him. Presumably, he wasn't yelling loud enough to wake the dead either.

Then, one day, he woke in the night on his own and found his brother's futon empty on a day he should have been there. So he dragged himself downstairs and found Kouichi at the dining table with a cup of milk, staring into its milky depths.

He wondered if it was a trick in the darkness that made, under that scar, his eyes look a little lighter than they normally were.


	9. 3-02

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**3.02**

Kouji poured himself a cup as well and sat across the table. Like that, they were almost mirror images. Almost…but not quite.

The scar over Kouichi's brow was almost hidden by the dark. In comparison, the whites of his sclera were bright, framing the blue irises. It was like that childish prank with the flashlight: frightening until the recognition came and the heart settled.

Except there was no flashlight, no prank. There never was, just Kouichi trying to wake him and now Kouichi sitting at the table with a glass of milk, sleepless or awoken and yet there's still something spooky about the image, something that almost makes him forget the guilt when he saw the light of the stove…

'Did I wake you?'

Kouichi regarded him. 'I've been dreaming about the Digital World. Duskmon, and Lucemon mostly.'

Kouji felt another stab of guilt. He hadn't noticed at all, wrapped up in his own dreams. 'Nightmares?' With those two involved, it was probably nightmares.

Except Kouichi shook his head, and Kouji didn't know if that was a lie or not. Surely it was, but…

_'The voice tells a lie…'_ said the dreams.

Except that would mean they were nightmares after all, and what did that have to do with his brother's reflection in the mirror?

Were they simply pointing him to the fact? Ironic if they were, because he felt sure he'd have noticed his brother's dreams earlier if he wasn't occupied with his own raising his hackles for defence in sleep.


	10. 3-03

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**3.03**

He couldn't remember. He didn't know his brother long enough to recognise whether those eyes really were lighter or not – but suddenly he was noticing they were lighter than his own. And pictures were no help. The camera could lie. The quality of those old pictures could tell a lie. He couldn't remember how they'd been in the Digital World and who knew? Maybe even the data that had formed his virtual body was telling a lie.

He didn't know and it bothered him. It made him keep on looking at those eyes, wondering _why_ they were suddenly bothering him, wondering why he was seeing something strange when there wasn't anything strange to see…

Except there could have been. And there was, because in his nightmares he noticed that blue colour as well. Blue eyes, pale face – and there was something else too, something defining.

Something he was somehow missing. And it didn't have anything to do with the bags under both their eyes…but maybe it did have something to do with the dreams. His dreams, at least: the dreams where he stared at his brother's reflection in the mirror and that voice urged him to see the truth and find the lie…

And they hadn't stopped after the revelation. They'd only grown a little clearer. The scar – it seemed brighter, rose red instead of pink… And those blue eyes a shade lighter.

_ 'Look deeper_,' the voice laughed. '_Look more closely. Don't listen to the lies.'_

'What lies?!' Kouji yelled, frustrated. 'What lies are you talking about?'

There was no reply. And the teasing dream faded as well.


	11. 3-04

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**3.04**

_Look more closely_. He found himself doing that, searching through the photos even though they lied, asking their mother about their eye colour. 'Darker,' she guessed, looking closely at Kouji's eye. But later she corrected herself. 'Lighter.'

He supposed it was hard to tell since they hadn't been together long. But his mother thought so too, and that drove the nail in deeper. If it was one thing if the dream Kouichi was different to the real one, but when he noticed the same things in both the lines became blurred.

Before, he didn't want the dreams at all. Now, he wanted to solve the puzzle it presented. He didn't know when that had changed, or why. But it had. And his attitude towards his dreams wasn't the only thing that had changed.

His brother's had too.


	12. 4-01

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**4.01**

Seeing those memories again and again, he should feel something more than the desire to not see them anymore. It wasn't a desperation. It wasn't angst tearing at his soul; it wasn't guilt that made him want to break down and cry and rewind it all – and maybe that was overdramatising the possibilities, but somewhere along the spectrum they were all reasonable, all appropriate. They should be amongst his worst memories: almost killing his brother, losing all sense of reason and becoming a slave to the instinct of destruction alone…and then thinking he'd been killed by Lucemon…

But he only felt sick and tired of seeing them. Bored – if he dared to use the word, because it didn't fit. It _shouldn't_ fit. It was all wrong, the wrong perspective…and yet it kind of did fit. It had to, for it to occur to him in the first place. But how could he not feel something more…emotional? Blood on his hands. His own death. That moment where he lost himself. And yet it didn't seem to…matter.

Or maybe that was too strong a word. He hoped it was too strong a word, but the repeating cycle made him realise it wasn't too strong after all. That it was almost appropriate.

But what did that mean? Not flinching at the blood – was he a bad person? Not flinching at his death – did his life feel that meaningless? Not flinching at that loss: loss of reason, loss of control… had he never gotten that self back?

'Hey…' The milk didn't show his reflection. It was too dark, with only the stove and the parted curtains passing light. 'What am I?'


	13. 4-02

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**4.02**

No-one answered him, of course. They still called him "Kouichi" - but, of course, they hadn't heard the question to begin with. And yet, suddenly, that name started to feel wrong.

It was that stupid idea that had crawled into his head like a leech and refused to get out. That idea that seemed to become more and more real, when he thought about his memories: his life before the digital world, his time _in_ the digital world – there was something odd about them, like he was watching a television show about somebody else's life instead of reflecting on his own. A stupid, stupid, idea, but it was stuck in his head and wouldn't let him go.

Because, really, why would he be somebody else? And who? Was it some twin thing that had them both mixed up, or was it something else.

But Kouji looked exactly like his pictures. And they were out too, like someone else had been asking the same question.

But he didn't have an answer. He barely had grounds for his question.


	14. 4-03

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**4.03**

Maybe the ultimate question cracked something, but the dreams changed. Suddenly, he was seeing a shadow of something…else. Wings, stretching from his shoulder blades where there should only be his shirt and jacket there. Hair curling where there was no curls. The outline of his shoes smoothening out. The rim of his socks thickening, as though he wore anklets of some kinds.

He stretched out his hands. They looked paler than he remembered them, and he remembered them well. He saw his hands every day. And he'd examined them quite thoroughly when they'd been tossed onto the moon. Their colouring was different now.

He woke up and looked at his hands again. They were still different, but different to the dream as well. Not white. Not their natural tan, but rather a mix of both.

He thought about the shadow that grew more defined each night and wondered what he'd woken with his musings.


	15. 4-04

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**4.04**

The answer was on his tongue, but he couldn't find the words.

Maybe that was ignorance. Maybe that was bliss. An unnerving bliss, because the question still existed but the answer slipped away like an eel.

That told him the answer was something that would break the current live he lived.

And it would break. He was sure of it, because he wasn't the only person asking the question, the only person wondering what answer it would give. And maybe it was the sort of question that would forever elude him - but not someone else.

For now, it was like waiting for the other shoe to drop.

ay, and she realises what's happened.

_Papa… I've had a strange dream._

And she knows she's got precious seconds left to end things before she's gone from this world.

_Just pinch yourself and you'll wake up._

She supposes that having a Jabberwocky bite your shoulder had the same effect.

She tightens her grip on her sword. It phases to her fingers, and she closes her eyes and pleads with it silently.

She isn't done. It solidifies under her palm and she opens her eyes. The Jabberwocky looms above.

And before reality can suffocate her, she screams and swings her sword in a mighty arc.

And then she finds herself on the grass, her mother mopping her brow and muttering of heat strokes.

She struggles up. Her mind is still in the battle, but part of her is travelling before and beyond that, to another battle.

'And Hamish is ever so worried…'

_Hamish!_ Of course. But facing the Jabberwocky might have been an easier task after all because her entire body is shaking and she must go back to that glasshouse and deny his offered hand. Because she cannot marry him. She sees the Hatter's red hair again, but it's gone and there's just a few ladies from the ball, with Margaret at their head, and all of them are muttering light sympathies and words of encouragement as though it were excitement and the heat that made her swoon.

Let them try getting bitten by a Jabberwocky, she thinks, but it was truly a silly thought. The inhabitants of Wonderland have little concept of humans, after all, or their world. It is so magical: talking animals, monsters, magic spells. And the five impossible things before breakfast – well, she's done more than five overall.

She remembers the list she made as she walked towards her foe, armoured and with the sword she'd so perilously won. _I can defeat the Jabberwocky_: that was the last. Had she done it? She hopes so, but the bleak brown trees of the Ascot estate don't give way to the truth and so she cannot know.

'Are you ready, my dear?'

_Ready?_ She supposes she must be ready. The Wonderland doesn't return, and there's only this world. And she's sorry she can't watch the aftermath. She's afraid there is no aftermath, but she can only hope there is, that her final strike has won the battle they brought her for…

And now she has a different sort of battle to fight.

'Ready.'


	16. 5-01

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**5.01**

Look closely. Look closely.

Maybe he was looking too closely because he was seeing shadows change. Were they really changing? Or was that just his minds playing tricks on him, giving him an answer to the questions he chased.

But he didn't want just any answer. He wanted the right answer.

The coffee stilled in his cup. Kouichi blew on his so his reflection broke up in waves and floating grains that hadn't quite mixed in. But Kouji saw his own eyes plainly: asking questions, searching for answers...

It's uncomfortable. And annoying for the both of them. And something else, too. A wall that stopped them getting closer, that kept each other at arm's length - and that was what really had to go.


	17. 5-02

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**5.02**

It was rare they were alone and together during the day, but it happened, and the sun was streaming through the open windows. Kouichi was on the couch, seemed to be trying to read a book. Hikaru was lying on the carpet. Kouji alternated between staring at his brother's form and looking away, then staring back when he felt eyes on him again.

It was a game of cat and mouse and Hikaru was oblivious to it. Until he wasn't. Suddenly growling, and the twins ushered him outside like they'd done it a thousand times before.

But that wasn't it. Kouichi looked apprehensive, like he already knew what Kouji wanted to ask.

Kouji shook his head. He had to stop thinking that. Or start thinking that.

The shadow caught his gaze again. Winged. Ringed.

'Who are you?'


	18. 5-03

**The Doppler Series**

* * *

><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**5.03**

Kouichi winced, like the sun had suddenly gotten a whole lot brighter - and maybe it had, because the shadow looked even more defined now, and the body more transparent. His eyes switched between two blues. The grey pyjamas he wore flickered to white and back.

'Did you have to ask?' But it was a rhetoric question. Of course things couldn't have gone on like that. Ignorance was bliss, but in the face of human curiosity it was also impossible.

It wasn't the answer Kouji wanted. It wasn't the question Kouichi wanted either, but now he knew. He wasn't Kouichi, and he couldn't pretend to be any longer.

The shadow stretched further, till it climbed the walls and loomed over the both of them like the puppet master, playing the final act.

Kouji stepped back, eyes wide. It seemed the answer that eluded him had clicked in the other's brain. And he wouldn't keep it silent. Oh, no. That would let them live in ignorance again and they were too far along for that.

'You can see.' He gestured at the shadow, almost carelessly. 'Who am I?'


	19. 5-04

**The Doppler Series**

* * *

><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**5.04**

Nononono…

But he recognised the form now, the shadow looming on the wall.

And now that he did, he realised how much sense it made as well.

'Lucemon…'

Surely, the real Kouichi would be insulted at that, or shocked, or hurt, or angry, or…something. He hoped he would. Or maybe he wasn't hoping hard enough because he knew he wouldn't.

And it didn't. Instead, bright blue eyes stared, without a care, into his soul.

Then again, the world didn't run on hope, did it? Otherwise they would have had their happily ever after ending instead of…this.

'And what will you do about it?'

He wasn't sure who'd even asked that: Lucemon still wearing the skin of his brother, or the voice from his dream.


End file.
